not an exit’s Reviews > Winter of Artifice: American Edition > Status Update

“The daytime was only a sketch. In the daytime all the gestures were thickened by remembrance. Only in the dream was the loved one wholly possessed, only in the dream was there ecstasy without death. Life began only behind the curtain of closed eyelashes. The woman who walked erect during the day and the woman who breathed and walked and swam during the night were not the same.”

“When I entered the dream I stepped on a stage. The lights cast on it changed hue and intensity like stage lights. The violent scenes happened in the spotlight and were enveloped by a thick curtain of blackness. The scenes were cut, interrupted, or broken with entr'actes. The mise en scene was stylized, and only what has meaning was represented. And very often I was at once the victim and observer.”

“Yet at the same time I know I do everything to create my own inaccessibility. I wear strange clothes which estrange people. And then I hate them for failing to reach me. I know I create the legend. It is hard to explain, but I do have the feeling that I come from very far. While I sleep I know that many things have happened. I do not remember them all but I don't wake near everything.”

“Everything else around you could move, change, but you, because of your mistrust of pain and loss, refused to move. You would be the island, the fixed center. For fear of a second loss, a second abandon, a second wound. That is why you never again gave yourself, that is why you are cold. You are afraid of giving yourself wholly.” literally dropped the book to the floor

“When she was watching, everything that moved seemed to be moving away, but when moving, this was only a tide, and the self turning, rotating, was feeding the rotation of desire.”

“It is not living too fast and abandoning oneself that carries one towards death, but not moving. Then everything deteriorates. When parts of yourself die they are only like leaves. What refuses to live in you will become like cells through which the blood does not pass. The blood must pass. There must be change. When you are living you seek the change; it is only when you stop that you become aware of death.”

“Because you are standing still and measuring time by your immobility, the others seem to run too fast towards an end. If you were living and running with them, you would cease to be aware of this death that is actually in you because you are watching.” Anaïs stopp

“In striking out for his own liberty, to save his life, he had struck at her, but he had poisoned himself with remorse. No need to hate. No need to punish. The last time she had come out of the ether it was to look at her dead child, a little girl with long eyelashes and slender hands. She was dead. The little girl in her was dead too. The woman was saved. And with the little girl died the need of a father.”